It’s a good thing for Justin Topa that a player’s opportunity to make an Opening Day roster is not entirely based on their spring training stats. Based on counting stats alone, the veteran Minnesota Twins reliever has had a spring training he’d like to forget.
Over six relief appearances, Topa has allowed eight hits, two home runs, and three walks. As a result, he has given up nine earned runs over 5 ⅓ innings. However, Topa has recorded 10 strikeouts and has averaged 94.2 MPH on his fastball this spring.
Topa’s last three outings have fared better than the previous two this spring, when he allowed eight of the nine runs on record. He’s thrown three scoreless innings, bringing his ERA down from 30.38 to 15.19, while not allowing any walks.
Despite pitching poorly in his first few outings, Topa has been feeling well all of camp and was able to have a normal off-season, even though he ended the 2025 season on the injured list with a strained oblique.
“It was a pretty normal off-season from a build-up and workout standpoint,” Topa said. “Like I said, once we got cleared with the oblique stuff, we kind of hit the ground running. I was kind of itching after being shut down earlier than expected. But no, it was a great off-season and ready to go.”
Justin Topa has spent camp working continuously on his changeup, which he added to his arsenal last season. Part of his tinkering with the pitch this spring, but it hasn’t been a cause of the bad results early in camp. He had more issues with his sinker and sweeper, allowing home runs on both pitches this spring. Still, he has come back around with control and is getting better results when hitters chase those two pitches.
But the changeup has been the focus for Topa to improve this spring. It will give him a fifth pitch to work with alongside the sinker, four-seam, sweeper, and cut fastball. However, Topa has been improving his grip this spring, which he didn’t feel great about for most of 2025.
“It was kind of an up-and-down pitch last year for me,” he said. “It was a new kick change grip, so having the off-season to tinker with that, see what works, what it’s going to do every day, and go from there was a big thing.”
The kick change grip, as Topa described it, “involves spiking the ball with one finger” upon release. It’s different from the grip involved in a regular changeup, which makes it that much more challenging to add to a pitcher’s arsenal without a full off-season of bullpens to get it underneath one’s wings.
Now that Topa has had that full off-season of work, he sees it becoming the effective pitch he and the Twins hope for it to be this upcoming season.
“I’ve thrown a changeup previously, kind of a traditional circle changeup,” he said. “But this was like, I compared it to learning a knuckleball the first couple of days playing catch with it last spring training.
“It was always missing arm-side by 15 feet. I felt like I had no idea where it was going half the time, but more repetitions and all that, and trying, ‘All right, we’re going to tinker here. Maybe not as go as high of a spike on the pitch change and moving here on the ball.’’
With Opening Day just four days away, Minnesota’s bullpen picture appears to be much clearer, and Topa looks to be at the top of the options the Twins have in a high-leverage relief role. Topa didn’t work much in high relief last season, and his WPA of -1.69 was a result of some bad performances early in the year when he had overthrown the ball to first base on more than one occasion.
However, last year was Topa’s second healthiest season in his career. He made 54 relief appearances with a 3.90 ERA, 6.7% walk rate, and 18.3% strikeout rate. For a pitcher with a lengthy injury history like Topa’s, it was a successful year overall.
But with a bullpen that is rebuilding itself from last season, and Justin Topa and Cole Sands being the only two carry-overs who spent all year in it, Topa will need to take the next step to be relied upon in high-leverage roles with his changeup as the 2026 season begins.
“I think Cole and I have an opportunity to do great things this year,” he said. “As a group, it’s going to see that blend of veteran guys and guys we have camp here that have pitched big innings in Major League Baseball for a long time. So having those guys mixed with the young guys is a good opportunity for the young guys to learn as well as us to learn every day.”
